The Moon in Selected East Asian Folk Tales. Cosmologies and deities of the moon in selected East Asian languages, traditions and folk tales

Michal’s lecture will focus on examples of folk tales from less known variants of East Asian traditions: for example, a cosmogonic local tale from the Korean Jeju island, and then ethnic Vietnamese and Mường folk tales about deities of the moon. Beside the cosmological complexity of topics in these relatively brief folk tales, the lecture will deal with the historical development of the respective religious traditions through selected theonyms and their use. Finally, Michal will compare Vietnamese syncretic motifs with their counterparts in Indian and Chinese source-traditions.

Jelka Vince, Ivo Pilar Institute. Czech Republic
The Proto-Slavic Pre-Christian Ritual Scenario of a MeđimurjeWedding as an Imitation of the Divine Wedding

Tuesday 5th December.Room G.02, 19 George Sq17.45-19.00

Fruitfulness and fertility are widely represented symbolically in wedding traditions. The objective of this paper is to examine a wedding comedy from the Međimurje folklore titled “Baba Went Mushroom Picking” from a angle, which is to say as a document of a nonliterate culture, a source and path to the fragmentary reconstruction of former religious systems. Specifically, the paper hopes to reconstruct the vestiges of a Proto-Slavic ritual scenario, on the basis of which the Međimurje wedding could be connected with divine weddings as paradigmatic models for all weddings. The paper also raises the crucial question of whether this performative form also provides insight into pre-Christian wedding traditions, and into the ritual wedding scenario as a repetition of the sacred divine wedding.

we are happy to draw your attention to the Annual Conference of the International Association for Comparative Mythology, which this year will take place at our home base, here in Edinburgh, from June 8th to June 10th.

The conference, which recently announced its call for papers, picked a rather intriguing primary theme for this edition: ‘Creatures of the Night: Mythologies of the Otherworld and Its Denizens’. Papers may also also include Myth, State and Nationalism, as well as ‘free topic’ submissions.

Further information will be posted regarding locations nearer the time.

Synopsis : An imaginative look at the tradition of folk lore collection in Ireland in which film maker, IASH Fellow Des Bell draws upon the magic of silent cinema to retell some of the uncanny tales collected by Sean O Eochaidh for the Irish Folk Lore Commission.

There will be a panel discussion after the screening.

Louise Milne, art historian and film maker, holds posts at Edinburgh College of Art and in the Film School at Edinburgh Napier University. She is the author of ‘Carnivals and Dreams; Pieter Bruegel and the history of the imagination’.

Liv Willumesen is Professor of History at the University of Tromsoe in Norway. She is a witchcraft scholar and the author of ‘Witches of the North. Scotland and Finnmark’

Desmond Bell, film maker and cultural theorist, is a visiting fellow in the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities at the University of Edinburgh. His film ‘The Enigma of Frank Ryan’ was selected for the World Film festival, Montreal and broadcast on Irish television.

Margaret MacKay (Chair) , is Honorary Fellow in Celtic and Scottish Studies and the University of Edinburgh and has extensive fieldwork experience of folklore collection.

The film represented Ireland in the 2003 Venice International Film Festival and was screened on RTE television.